Here is a hard Fox to find. It’s a 16g Sterlingworth Skeet & Upland Game gun and it’s on Gunbroker.com now. The auction ends 8/24/2015 @9:30:00 PM ET.
The Sterlingworth Skeet and Upland Game Gun was introduced in 1935. Skeet was new sport then, having been invented in 1920 by Charles Davis, a grouse hunter from Andover, MA.
In 1926, William Harnden Foster introduced Skeet to America with an article in the February issue ofNational Sportsman and Hunting and Fishing magazine. The game boomed in popularity and by the ’30s makers offers shotguns tailored for the sport.
Fox added the Skeet & Upland Game Gun to their line in 1935 to “…meet the demand for a moderately priced skeet and upland game double gun”. They were offered in 12, 16 & 20 gauge, and with 26″ & 28″ barrels.
BTW: For a comp, here’s a nearly-new 16g with 26″ barrels that sold a couple years ago.
Fox Sterlingworth 16 Ga Straight Stock Shotgun, 28” – Made 1935 – Mod & Imp Mod – 6 Lb 7 Oz: This Fox Sterlingworth bears a Utica barrel address, was made in 1936 (SN 3726xx), has 28” barrels choked Modified and Improved Modified with 2-3/4” chambers and mid/front ivory beads, automatic safety, straight stock, extractors, 2-1/2” DAH, 1-5/8” DAC and 13-3/8” & 14-1/8 LOP. The weight is a handy 6 pounds, 7 ounces.
It retains about 65% blue with most of the thinning on the sides and a small ding in the right tube 10-1/4” from the breech that is barely visible inside. There’s also evidence of a very shallow dent on the bottom of the left tube 5” from the muzzle that seems to have been professionally removed. The bores are perfect mirrors and examination with a Hawkeye bore scope yields no indication of polishing. The frame retains 60% of original case color. The stocks are completely sound with scattered light to moderate handling marks (mostly light) and a repaired small, shallow chip on the right side of the butt plate. It is 100% on-face, lock-up is as tight as a vault (tested with the forend removed) and the top lever comes to rest well right of center. Though this gun has a short tang there are known factory examples of short tang straight stocked guns and there is absolutely no sign of it having been modified. A very nice 16 gauge that, on handling, one can immediately feel will comport itself quite well in the field.
